


He Himself Was Broken

by Lucky107



Series: Sailor Beware [4]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Original Character(s), mild PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 20:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7403797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's going to take some time to shake the fear of being held up by his own companion, but when she sits cross-legged on the floor like this she almost looks like a child... well, if she weren't sitting directly over the corpse of a stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Himself Was Broken

**Author's Note:**

> Suzanne - Leonard Cohen - 1967

"Have you gotten a hold of yourself?"  MacCready demands, his voice a mixture of anger and disbelief.

It's going to take some time to shake the fear of being held up by his own companion, but when she sits cross-legged on the floor like this she almost looks like a child... well, if she weren't sitting directly over the corpse of a stranger.  Reno's eyes are empty now, hollow as she stares down at that pale and lifeless face, but they were murderous mere moments ago.  Even with her weapon confiscated, she's a dangerous woman.

MacCready thumbs her .44 idly, spinning the cylinder.

He knows he should leave her - save himself the trouble, he's already given her back her finder's fee - but a nagging voice in the back of his mind tells him this isn't Reno.  He's dealt with enough psychopaths in his lifetime to know that she isn't the worst of the wasteland scum.

In fact, of all the people he's met since leaving Little Lamplight, meeting Reno was like a breath of fresh air.  She could be subtle with her kindness, but she's only been loyal to him until now.

And he can't pretend he didn't hear her protest...

 

_"Don't you get it?"  The stranger - later confirmed to be Phyllis Daily - says dauntingly and Reno, completely at her mercy, begins to lower her weapon to the floor.  "I'm a Synth, for Christ sake!"_

_"Easy, ma'am," Reno insists.  "I don't mean you any—"_

_The shot echoes across the bay._

_In the opening Reno has provided by kneeling down, MacCready takes the shot he's offered from the boathouse and the bullet pierces the stranger's chest.  In a heartbeat, the stranger's on the floor, gurgling her final incoherent words before coming to a rest, but it doesn't matter.  MacCready finds himself held up in the doorway, the barrel of Reno's .44 in his face._

_"Drop the gun," she insists in a low, husky tone.  MacCready knows better than to smile and blow it off like some kind of a joke when their eyes meet and he sees a stranger there.  "I said drop the gun."_

_"She said she was a Synth," MacCready offers in self-defense, though he does as he's told.  Similarly to Reno only moments ago, he's lowering himself to the floor of the cabin to lay his rifle down.  "She had you at gun-point, she—"_

_But Reno's eyes remain dark.  "She was confused."_

_"Yeah, maybe," MacCready agrees.  "And so are you."_

_It takes only a split-second for the young mercenary to knock the gun out of Reno's shaking hand and, using all of his weight, throw the woman to the floor.  He's not gentle and he has no doubt that he's bruised her, but he can't bring himself to care._

_He wants to live._

_But he wants for them both to live._

 

Reno sits cross-legged on the floor like a child, looking down at that pale and lifeless face when she concludes, "She wasn't a Synth."

He overreacted.

He knows he overreacted - he knew it the minute his finger touched the trigger - but there was no way he was going to take a chance with a stranger waving a gun around.  Even if the woman wasn't a Synth, she was clearly delusional and there was no way he was going to let her shoot Reno.  It was just that simple.

"What do you want, Reno?  An apology?"  MacCready insists crudely.  "Look, this isn't the Old World anymore - there's no way we could have known."

"We could have," Reno counters violently.  "If we had just let her speak, we would have known!  It wouldn't have... it wouldn't have had to come to this."

When that wild, murderous look flares back up in Reno's eyes, MacCready realises that the trigger has nothing to do with Synths or conflicting moral compasses.  No, the trigger is in Reno's head.  The trigger is whatever memories she harbors in the deep recesses of her mind... and it's the things she saw not as a civilian, but as a soldier.

She doesn't put the suit on, the hat, in an attempt to find peace with the life she left behind in 2077.  She puts the suit on, the hat, in an attempt to find peace with the person she became in 2075, when she enlisted to join the United States Navy.

It takes MacCready a moment to fish the wooden toy solider from his breast pocket.

How many times had he told Lucy that he was a soldier?

"I'm sorry, Reno."  Slowly - almost carefully, as if to not upset the broken sailor - MacCready moves to sit cross-legged beside her with that wooden toy soldier in his hand.  "My wife, Lucy, gave this to me right after we met. I... I told her I was a soldier, and she made it for me...  Never could bring myself to tell her the truth, that I was just a hired killer."

When, finally, Reno's eyes drift from the face of the stranger to the face of the wooden toy soldier, MacCready offers it to her as a sort of peace offering.

"I want you to hold onto it," he says.  "I know it sounds silly, but maybe... maybe you'll take more from it than I ever did when I was playing at war."

It takes her a moment to accept the gift and the gesture that comes with it, taking the small wooden soldier with both of her hands, but then her eyes travel to MacCready's face.  She's sober now, and oddly quiet, but MacCready knows his friend is back and that's more than enough for him.


End file.
